Terry and Clarence Low: When your iPhone is frozen

Q: My iPhone seems to freeze up a lot. Why, and what can I do to prevent this?

A: There are lots of reasons your iPhone may be freezing. The most common culprits are having too many unused apps open at one time (which also drains your battery much more quickly) and space issues. Your phone may have the ability to store 32 gigabytes of data, but using all that space is a bad idea. Another reason may be an outdated operating system.

Fortunately, all these problems are fixable.

When your phone freezes, the first step is to turn off the device by holding the sleep/wake button (top right). If nothing happens, try a hard reset by holding the home and sleep/wake buttons at the same time for at least 10 seconds or until the Apple logo appears on the screen. Often, doing a restart will complete updates and downloads of recently installed apps and fix the freezing problem.

If the problem persists, plug your phone into a charger when it freezes, which can unstick the screen. If only a single app has stopped working, double press the home button, hold down on the app icon that's causing the trouble and press the red minus sign to close it.

For the space issue, try to keep at least 2 GB of free space available, and be sure your operating system is updated. Go to settings, find the "general" folder and select the "software update" option.

As a last resort, you can restore the original factory settings on your iPhone, but be aware that doing so will delete all media from your device, so be sure to back everything up first. To restore, make sure your version of iTunes is up to date and, with the phone connected to your computer, click iPhone (in the left column under "devices"), then click "restore" in the summary tab and follow the instructions.

Q: I love you YouTube, but I've read there may be privacy problems for users. What can I do to protect myself?

A: As far as social network sites go, YouTube is among the safest. But still, it's always important to be aware of online privacy, so the next time you are on the site check your privacy settings.

Once you're logged into your account, click on your avatar at the top right of your screen and select "YouTube Settings." From the next screen, hit "privacy" and look at the options. Under "likes and subscriptions," check the box to ensure any videos you like and any channels you subscribe to are confidential.

Under "search and contacts," choose who can contact you on the site by checking the first box; checking the second box gives you the option of allowing people to find you by your email address.

If you've connected other social accounts to YouTube, click on "connected accounts" in the Account Settings menu. If you've linked Facebook or Twitter, they'll show up here, and below them is the option to "share your public activity to connected accounts." This will give you the ability to broadcast videos to your linked sites whenever you upload a video, comment on a video or like a clip. Unchecking all these boxes means this activity will not be shared on Facebook or Twitter.

If you have a YouTube channel, go to the "connected accounts" page and click on the "feed settings on your channel" link. Checking the various boxes here means activity will be posted to your feed when you add a video to a public playlist, subscribe to a channel or make a comment. And again, leaving them unchecked will not post this activity.

Terry and Clarence Low are co-founders of Byte Technology, a web design firm based in Monterey, Denver and Minneapolis. Their personal technology column appears on alternating Saturdays. Read more news on their blog at www.byte-technology.com/ blog. Send questions to tlow@byte-technology.com, or write to Bits 'N' Bytes, 400 Camino El Estero, Monterey 93940